


just my soul responding

by Graysworks



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post S7, SLIGHT one sided jeith, Sickfic, but mostly sheith being dumb and worried, obligatory shiro visiting keith in hospital fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-07-02 23:51:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15807084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Graysworks/pseuds/Graysworks
Summary: Keith can't seem to stay awake, and Shiro can't seem to stay at all.} It would be funny if Keith wasn't out for two days. Shiro is pale when he asks, paler when Griffin answers, and he's halfway to going for the doctor before Keith has his wrist in an iron grip. There's no telling which one the action shocks more, but he settles on Griffin when the pilot starts backing out in Shiro's stead."I'm- gonna be okay," Keith says, haltingly. "Right?"





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is a giftfic for everyone who sent sweet sheiths to me this week! it's super out of odds from fluff and kind of different from what else I've been working on, but I definitely wanted to finish something for us this week so,, pls enjoy;; ;

Shiro is quiet the first time he visits.  
  
Technically, it isn't so much of a visit as it is a reunion, because there's an empty bed beside his in the room and Keith knows it isn't for his mother or Kolivan. It's the second time he wakes up. Shiro presses a hand to his eyes and sunlight glints from the gold of his shoulders, stirs his hair like a halo in the breeze. Someone's opened the window while Keith slept.  
  
"I'll be back soon," He says, and then nothing at all. Usually there are words, Keith thinks, but Shiro sniffs and the sound is in equal parts endearing, concerning, bubbling something rusty from his own chest while he blinks. He hurts all over, through and down every edge, from every glancing hit- but it's quickly dulled in the wake of cresting consciousness and the way Shiro's head is bowed over him. He tilts his own a little closer, doesn't ask. The sun washes over his skin like a soft breath, and Shiro is in the process of rubbing his eyes when the door swings open.  
  
"Visiting time's up," Someone announces flatly. There's a quiet rustle of shuffling papers behind them. "Wrap it, Shirogane, we've got another debriefing to get to. He'll be here when you get back, and god's sake, don't get that tubing wet..." The reprimand becomes grumbled and trails away, the door swings closed with a soft noise.  
  
Keith winces while dulled pain makes itself known in his bones again. Shiro glances at him when he blinks through the worst of it, links a finger with his own atop the rumpled white sheets. He tips his head toward the window, and it's nice; it's quiet in the lightly staged room, the space Shiro is giving him here. Eventually the CO's voice fades completely from the hall and some louder officer takes his place, calls Shiro to evaluate one fighter or another for tests. Keith's almost tempted to laugh at Shiro's exasperated sigh.  
  
"Go ahead," He manages, and it's like Shiro needed the permission, with how his eyes change. "'m okay."  
  
It takes another minute. The second officer takes their leave and Shiro stays, looking at him, linked just with that studying gaze and single finger curled around his own and Keith wants to know what's happened to make him quiet like this. The door creaks open yet again, reveals a few more messengers of varying rank that all have the task of collecting Shiro for one matter or another. Things are going to change now, Keith thinks suddenly- no more stolen discussions or private consultations or undivided attention the way he used to get it. They've always been wildly occupied, but this is different.  
  
Maybe not a bad thing, he thinks, as Shiro's hand moves to his head while he stands, big and warm and solid like everything he's been in the past few weeks. When he speaks louder to address everyone's concerns, Keith knows they're staring. The weight of it on the back of his neck is only soothed by the touch sliding over it, the reassuring evenness of Shiro's boots on the floor- because it's been hard to find his footing around personnel and they're both so tired. It's almost easy to forget they have to. The small crowd files away with their successfully delivered messages, but one of them must stay behind.  
  
"Is he... going to be alright?" The voice is familiar; even and serious and pinging something like a memory in Keith's head even as drowsiness begins tugging at him again.  
  
"He's asleep," Shiro says, and the flatness might be mistaken for warning if Keith didn't know any better. He presses further into the pillow, tries to get comfortable before something inevitably comes along to wake him up again.  
  
The cadet pauses, or maybe exhaustion tunes him out of Keith's ears for a moment. "...are you alright, sir?" The question isn't completely unexpected. They've both been through enough that it must show.  
  
Maybe he falls asleep before Shiro gives an answer. Maybe there isn't one at all.  
  
Griffin visits before Shiro next time.  
  
He's unharmed, all things said, and he has food, so Keith decides not to think too hard into it and accepts the kindness for what it is. He's fairly certain solids aren't allowed while he's still hooked up to god knows how many machines, but the meal is hot and distinctly Earth-flavored, and he's hungry enough to clear an entire pantry. Griffin paces while he eats. He fidgets with his uniform sometimes, straightens his shirt and brushes hair from his eyes like it's bothering him.  
  
He doesn't sit, and he doesn't say anything. He's gone before sleep starts pulling Keith down again, and then it's morning and Kolivan is there instead, poring over what looks like a blank page. Keith asks and he explains that Krolia had encouraged him to review some earth languages, and then admits that he's a little lost, that the process of writing is tedious, apparently. Keith manages a tired smile at the request for help- and then motions him on over, makes space and occupies himself that way.  
  
They spend the better half of the day walking through it together, answering questions when doctors and officers wander in for the occasional matter of importance. It's boring and probably needless in the end, but it's a distraction and his mom's smile is a mile wide when she comes back, sees what they've been up to- and maybe it isn't any of those things after all. The three of them make good company. They sit close enough that he wonders at it, but then a nurse stumbles in with some x-rays meant for the doctors.  
  
And he thinks he understands.  
  
In the end, he's barely awake enough to call it a full day. Keith dips in and out for a while, likely due to the drugs or the recovery or the sunlight thawing through the window for hours at a time, and the hardest part is adhering to Earth schedule long enough to stay awake, after that first stretch. Eventually he decides not to be bothered into trying because the quiet is nice, and the time to rest is nicer so he simply stays and dozes and drifts.  
  
It's not terrible. Shiro returns close to sunset and the room is all empty gold, his voice is all empty insistence when he tells Keith to go back to sleep. He doesn't think he could, if he wanted to, not when they're both here and the feeling of something fragile expands in the silence. He tells Shiro to look at him and they've both inched their fingers together over the bed before he does.  
  
"You're pale," Shiro says. "I-" He cuts himself off. It's uncharacteristic, or maybe just uncommon- but Keith waits. The great irony of being without Shiro for two years; he's learned patience enough to nearly parallel the older.  
  
Something slams down the hall, and the touch flies away as quickly as it comes. Shiro has Krolia's knife in his hand before Keith fully processes the motion, and his weight goes back when he stands abruptly between Keith and the room- but it's nothing, in the end. Griffin pauses upon opening the door and Shiro backs down from the reflexive position and Keith digests the speed he's just moved at, and it doesn't feel like nothing. It doesn't feel like nothing at all.  
  
Shiro sets the knife down and looks at him, but it's not what he wanted.  
  
"I'm sorry," He says, like an explanation. Keith swallows a tired sort of disappointment at the silent communication, the promise of more work to do. "Please, just... just get some rest." Suddenly he's the one that can't meet Shiro's eyes, unfocused anyway, and it's not normal how exhausted he is but it's what wins him out in the end. Keith nods, freezes when a hand passes over the crown of his head, shockingly gentle; Griffin turns away as if witnessing something he shouldn't be.  
  
Then Shiro is gone again, the room all empty comforts in his absence. Keith is grateful for the space.  
  
But he's yet to decide that he _wants_ it.  
  
The week drags on in a haze of exhaustion. He gets to see everyone of importance at some point while updates roll in, like the clouds gathering from his window in the far distance, and he finds he's looking forward to the rain. It feels wrong to be aching and bedridden while the sun shines. His body hurts in ways he thought would be familiar by now but he'd been wrong- there's nothing commonplace about reaching for water in the night, and having a throb through his spine that keeps him from stretching like he's used to. It's hard to manage at first, but he does what he can.  
  
His mom and Kolivan help. Shiro is occupied most of the days and the others are still in recovery of their own, so he passes time by scratching out names on a piece of paper, last known locations, how old they'd be if Keith met them again now between three decaphoebes and two years and decades of stress. Someone tells him Matt is in the building. He doesn't hang on to consciousness long enough to ask about seeing him.  
  
They don't realize he's sick until a burning glow crawls under his skin, until he tries to get up for visiting hours and pain sends him crumpling against the bed rail. The flashes vary in intensity while the nurses panic and rush around him, passing along something about Komar magic and his Galra blood and quintessence to the doctor hurrying in- and then footsteps are beating the floor in time with his pounding chest and Shiro is there again.  
  
" _No_." He sounds broken even as he's the one doing the steadying. Keith jumps at the touch, clamps his jaws down, half expecting something terrible to happen- "Not again, please, _Keith_."  
  
It's the first indication he gets of something underneath. "I- what-?" Discomfort blurs the room, the rush, Shiro's response while he's still dragging Keith into his arms from the floor. They wrap tight and secure and shocking again, stuttering the breath in his chest like it's the first time, like it always is- grounding enough to keep Keith on his feet, but still no good and it's burning, it's _burning_ -  
  
"I know," Shiro mutters, hand steady around the back of his head. "I know."  
  
Keith never finds out what he means.  
  
It gets sorted in the end, with some kind of injection that numbs his arms and the scar of his cheek, his shoulder; not before Shiro sets him back on the bed and snaps a glare at the nurse trying to help. The mid-morning sun sets his eyes fiery and harsh, and like most things with him nowadays- Keith doesn't know what to make of it. In the end, it doesn't matter. His eyelids go heavy and he's slipping away again.  
  
Shiro is gone when he wakes several hours later. Instead there's a figure he knows from somewhere, pacing beside the window, noon sun throwing light off of his pilot's uniform. Keith struggles to place the familiarity while his vision shifts out of focus.  
  
"-not going to stabilize. It won't work," Someone is saying behind him, in a tone that might concern if he'd woken in better awareness. "There's no way to speed up the process, it will take months- weeks longer than the others, at least."  
  
"He won't take the news well." Another voice, unfamiliar, still unattached to the one hovering in Keith's line of butchered sight. Exhaustion rolls him over in a wave and then he's struggling to surface again.  
  
"Shirogane has to live by the laws of time like the rest of us. If that means returning to his duties while our patient recovers- then so be it, this man has given enough for his cause."  
  
No, he thinks, not me, but there's no use. His vision is going for good.  
  
He's never been so drained by simply breathing.

 

* * *

 

 

The next time it happens, he's worse. Between the dreams and the hovering nurse and Shiro's increasing levels of busyness, the downward spiral is more like a slide, and the only thing straightening his tilt is having company. He starts to think it's for the best that Griffin starts showing up at a constant rate throughout the week. It's new, and strange, and slightly suspicious- but the food he brings is unhealthily greasy enough that Keith accepts. Again, the officer doesn't sit, doesn't speak. He doesn't do much at all except walk quietly in and quietly back out.  
  
And suddenly- it's routine. Keith sleeps and wakes and sleeps and wakes and then Griffin will show up, one hand shoved in his pocket and the other clutching the aforementioned takeout bag, and he'll know it's two in the afternoon and someone is there just for him. They don't talk about it. Sometimes the officer eats at the window like he's anxious to get back out, sometimes he stands beside it and watches Keith take his time like he's got nowhere else to be.  
  
It's unnerving, at first, and then cause for panic.  
  
Realistically- there's no way. Keith had made sure to find tip offs of discerning reality after that fiasco in deep space, but a few days in it hits him, hard, sends him tripping out of the hospital bed and into the hall beyond. It's not the first time he's gone out, but it's the first where the halls are moving with personnel, his ears are ringing with the quiet reminder of oxygen levels low, _oxygen levels low-_  
  
"Keith." Shiro shouldn't be here but he is. Off duty, Keith's mind supplies uselessly, but his voice doesn't shape the words while his friend hurries, then sprints amidst the clamor and people. _Oxygen levels low._ "Keith!"  
  
_This isn't real._  
  
"Please, come on, come on back."  
  
_I can't- I'm slipping, we'll fall-_  
  
"You're not gonna fall," Shiro says, and Keith doesn't remember how his feet left the ground. The arms around his waist tighten like he's something delicate and he's not, he's heavy again, that burning glow is coming back. It has to be the magic from their last battle. He wouldn't bury his head in Shiro's shoulder otherwise, he tells himself, cling with both arms and then claws in full view of a few dozen passing officers, uncaring of broken protocol- uncaring of what they think of their captain for letting his second in command near suffocate him. It doesn't matter.  
  
It matters that Keith manages to breathe easy for a heartbeat. It matters that Shiro's voice goes gruff as he tells people to move and quiet when he tells Keith that he's doing fine, that the air is there and he just needs to to breathe it, _I'm not gonna let us fall again, Keith._ There's a flicker of a moment where his grip goes almost painfully tight, and then they're back in the room and the dark and the alone, and Griffin closes both bystanders and himself out when they go. Keith's eyes are shutting too and he's away again.  
  
Crashing waves on an endless beach. _Shiro, wait-_ A cold and empty bunkroom somewhere in deep space, mission reports tidied, jacket stowed in the hopes of one day taking it out to look at once more. _Please, I- you can't do this to me again-_ Glittering abyss and a horizon of stars that stretches on, and on, and on with its silence.  
  
_I died, Keith._  
  
He's gone when the sun streams warmth into the room again, filters soft and saturated into the world.  
  
Keith closes his eyes and tries to slip into something more peaceful than before.  
  
The doctors talk to him privately that day. At first he doesn't understand, and then they start throwing around words like overexposure and hypersomnia and _four to six months_  and he understands enough to slam the rail down and unhook himself from the headboard machines. They don't try to stop him from leaving, but one adds on something about the rest of the team's recovery time and it's bad- bad enough that he pauses before making himself scarce, and gives them another chance to explain.  
  
The last hit they took was beyond magic, one of them says. Part of the same type of blow that burned away Shiro's body after their fight with Zarkon. Keith was at the head when it happened, so he's taken the brunt of it in Shiro's place, in everyone's place- but that doesn't mean they weren't drained like he was. They're going to need time, the doctors keep stressing. _Keith_ is going to need time.  
  
He pushes a conflicted hand through his hair. When they offer to let him sleep on it, he grits his teeth- but they're right. It's out of his hands for now.  
  
So he sleeps on it. He sleeps and sleeps and sleeps on it, rolls over, sleeps on it some more. The suggestion is more of a formality in the end, because there's no choice in the matter and Keith so tired- too tired. The blackouts are sudden and frustratingly frequent, and someone tells him it's just shock but that someone isn't a doctor, and he barely trusts the latter enough as it is. The only crowd he's at ease with is his mother and Kolivan, and then when he regains enough coordination to sit up for longer periods- the one filtering through the door for updates on the outside.  
  
It's as unexpected as it isn't. There are a limited number of television sets around campus, and people start to file in every Tuesday and Thursday evening to gather around his, waiting for the latest news on relief work. It brings a bit of anticipation and chatter to the space before long. Most are pilots who'd pitched in during the fight against Sendak, some of higher rank- but all glad of any communications development or information the Garrison probes are able to provide them with. It's civil, but they have their moments of rowdiness.  
  
Keith starts to enjoy the company. It's a distraction, an interruption, and though he doesn't usually engage- it's something to do.  
  
Griffin shows up once for the ISS reports, motor oil smudged across his chin while he joins the crowd unnoticed. Those fighters must be a lot of upkeep, with how ruffled the rest of his team looked when they'd filtered in, and Keith realizes with a certain interest that there's only one out of flight uniform. Grounded, he thinks.  
  
Huh.  
  
There's an open spot beside Keith on the bed. Griffin glances over but doesn't take to it until Keith jerks his chin in reluctant offer. Old grudge or not, the pilot's been nice to him- and the latter isn't about to let a favor go un-repaid while the world is starting itself over again. It's almost a mistake. Griffin isn't completely filthy upon second glance, but it's clear he's been working on _something_ for the past couple hours. He wipes the back of a glove over his forehead while he sits and it leaves yet another smudge in its wake.  
  
"Thanks," He mutters, eyes fixed on the screen. "Been out there for ages."  
  
Keith nods, attention shifting likewise. "Not as long as they have." Nobody really knows how the international station managed to survive Sendak's initial wipe of Earth's satellites, but it's one of the small victories everyone's come to appreciate within the week. Sometimes he thinks they've had it the worst, watching on, going without a means to help when the commander started to wipe people out. It's hard to imagine what it could've been like.  
  
Both of them grow quiet as the broadcast goes to intermittent static. Across the room, Shiro's eyes find Keith and then Griffin beside him, watching as the latter taps one foot on the ground, fiddles with the sleeves of the uniform tied around his waist. Keith frowns at the furrowed brow. The two of them must be a sight, he assumes, but the world's been changed in a lot of sudden ways recently- so it's not as unexpected a thing when he takes it apart. They spend the rest of the hour in a comfortable silence while they watch, and then it's over before he knows it.  
  
Keith finds a bit of pride in the fact that he stayed awake throughout, but even so- he's tired again. This kind of exhaustion is new, not always unwelcome with how hard he's been pushing these past months, but there's still no small amount of exasperation in sitting back against the copious pillows crowding him in, and not wanting to move again for several days. Uselessness has never sunk claws into him as hard as it is now.  
  
Griffin glances over when he thumps his head back. "Still feels shitty?"  
  
He doesn't have it in him to bristle, even. "You could say that. Battle..." Maybe it's an understatement. "Did a bit of a number on me."  
  
Griffin runs a hand through his hair, and then laughs, short and quiet down at the boot crossed over his knee. Keith doesn't know what to make of it until- "A _bit_ , yeah. You don't know how rough you looked after we dug you out of that machine, took about a full day to clear the damage."  
  
It doesn't register for a minute. Keith sits forward again and finds himself mimicking Shiro's earlier expression, unconsciously so while he starts, "You... got me out?" Griffin glances back at him with another strange look that serves as confirmation enough. Keith almost thinks the rest should make sense now; the food, the lack of antagonism, some kind of connection between the three that he's not figuring out completely- but it doesn't. If anything, it just makes this all the more confusing. "How long was I-"  
  
"On your feet, Griffin," Someone interrupts, and then he's standing, straightening while Shiro approaches and fixes some unreadable look on the pilot. Keith frowns at the display of rank. He's never been one for messing around, that's more Lance's style- but it becomes evident when he comes closer, smooths the blanket where Griffin had been sitting.  
  
There's something oddly deliberate behind the motion.  
  
"Outside," Shiro says. "Now."

 

* * *

 

 

He never quite discovers what's happening there. Griffin continues to visit, Shiro continues to make himself scarce, and Keith can read the room. Whatever's going on, he's in no position to tell either how they need to be getting along.  
  
It doesn't mean he has to like it. Keith doesn't have to like any of it, but he's in this for the long haul, and there's no getting out- not without help. Days start slipping by, some without real meaning as he drifts through the worst of it, and the glowing was one thing but this- waking to find longer hours have passed and he's been out for more of the day than not is hard. A slew of pilots appears around the bed one day, all vaguely familiar, all wearing the same curious face as they watch him struggle to keep his eyes open.  
  
His vision blacks out for a moment and when he comes back, it's later in the day, and the group is gone. It messes with his head. He doesn't know whether they're really present or not, at least until it happens again -a few more times- and then eventually he's awake enough to discern reality and converse. The blonde one introduces herself first, and he recognizes the name, recognizes all of them; these are the squadron fighters who'd escorted them through the city fringes before the last battle, the ones who'd flown under-  
  
"Griffin couldn't make it," Leifsdottir explains, short and succinct. She pushes a small paper bag into Keith's hands. "He said to give this to you." He takes the junk food offer for what it is, managing a small mumble of _oh_ before taking another minute to process the sudden company. There's no way Griffin meant to send all of them, but here they are, hovering, watching, almost in- anticipation, he thinks.  
  
Keith digs into the bag and pulls out whatever greasy mess he's been gifted this time. "Uh... thanks."  
  
"Dude," The dark haired pilot tugs on Kinkade's sleeve and whispers like Keith won't hear it. "I didn't believe it at first." He lets whatever issue it is slide for the moment- he's hungry, and the windows shake with a rumble of helicopter passes outside, and the group withdraws to the end of his bed while his jaws get used to moving again. He can admit he's been in need of a good nap for a long time, but lying stiff for so long is starting to get on his nerves.  
  
The junk food doesn't exactly help, but it's only once in a while and Keith assumes it's more of a gesture than anything. He's not about to say no to the first crappy Earth food he's been offered in years, so when the pilots leave only to come back the next day- he just rolls with it. The formality is still a little weird. Keith doesn't know exactly how the Garrison's changed during the three-to-four years they've been away, but something tells him rank doesn't have everything to do with it.  
  
Either way, the new company doesn't go unappreciated. Keith gets along with Kinkade because Kinkade gets along with Keith, which seems redundant but makes sense when he considers how the pilot doesn't seek out interaction, elects to keep his silence instead while different squadrons filter in for broadcasts and such. The other two are different, in that sense. Leifsdottir reminds him of Pidge at first until he realizes that she and Kolivan could talk tactics for hours- and it's such an odd combination of previously separate worlds that Keith is dizzy for a minute.  
  
Rizavi is the one that asks what type of painkiller they're giving him, and then- how much he thinks that stuff would go for in a _purely_ hypothetical black market setting. He's not sure how to categorize her other than that, but the question speaks for itself in his mind.  
  
It's overcast the first time Shiro catches them visiting. Keith's been listening to Leifsdottir's variety of words in description of whatever Iverson's done to their fighters now, with some new installation, attempting to keep his eyes open through the whole thing. It isn't an easy task; the dark outside is throwing him off. Someone's brought in an old lamp for the corner, but it isn't enough.  
  
Rizavi makes a comment that has everyone stifling groans and laughs into their hands, and Keith has no doubt it's about morphine or the full moon or something equally ridiculous that he's come to expect from the pilot, but it's background noise as his head tips against the pillow. There's more sound, opening doors and tapping boots and rustling uniforms when they stand to attention- and then there's just Shiro, hands opening and closing at his sides when he pauses. Something crosses his face at the sight of Keith's tired smile.  
  
The latter slips away as Shiro sits, quiet again, eyes distant and stressed. He looks like he's been working himself to the bone but the closing off is new, and strange, and Keith finds himself hesitating before asking what's wrong. The question is a hit and miss before it leaves his mouth.  
  
Shiro's always been stellar at lying.  
  
"Nothing." He says, but his tone is too unreadable to call flat. It's a tip off in some small way, and Keith swallows, pushes down the odd urge to reach for him, a dull ache for skin and bone and something to tell him that Shiro is real when he feels further away than ever. The worst part is that he doesn't know, Keith thinks- that it could be in his head and his heart and still be a half-truth, something to hold while he's alone and drifting. Just his thoughts and his dreams and the stillness, the _silence_ , oxygen levels _low_ -  
  
"Keith," Shiro's voice is the furthest thing from flat, suddenly, broken and unsure as he's shaking Keith's shoulder. "Keith- don't-"  
  
It's no use- he's burning again. Emotional crises, one of the doctors speculated, exaggerate the symptoms, and it's such a cold, impersonal phrasing that he could find it funny if pain wasn't shivering down his bones; if colors weren't warping under his skin like an aurora living behind his veins. He says something to Shiro, he thinks, and then it's dark.  
  
His dreams are disturbed that night. Still nebulous, blinding flashes of incoherent panic; glass shattering around him, back slammed into metal, hot breath fanning across one cheekbone and turning unbearable. Shiro's limp head rolling down, _look at me please-_ hand slipping, _don't let go_ falling, falling, falling. He snaps into morning with Kolivan crouched close at the bed, Krolia holding his face as if he's gone a little Galra again.  
  
Keith tastes blood on a retracting tooth and knows that's just it. His mom hovers while the traces wear down, weaken with returning lethargy. She nuzzles a bit out of habit when they're gone. By Kolivan's pinched features, the two of them have been here a while, and Keith squeezes his hand in silent apology.  
  
"Shiro," He starts, more question than anything.  
  
"He thought it best to stay away," Kolivan answers. Keith isn't able to tell by the tone whether he agrees. "The healers preferred us here."  
  
It's an explanation as much as it isn't, but Keith takes it lying down like everything these days. The nursing staff comes in sooner rather than later again, and the rest of the day passes in a blur of questions, tests, more questions and more tests. Someone asks him what he remembers of the crash. Another moves on to a different question before he can answer, or suddenly, remember.  
  
They pitch the idea of PT to him, only once he's strong enough to stay awake for longer amounts of the day, but the notion of walking again is too appealing. That, Keith agrees, the first time it comes up, that's what he needs. Something to focus on, something to work toward- and the reluctance he gets in response does the opposite of discourage him, especially with Kolivan and Krolia at his back to push the idea. He'll need to get out of the room sooner of later.  
  
It takes almost a week to win them over. He understands the hesitation; he's winded just from showering, or moving to the couch during visiting hours as it is, but eventually there's a consensus in his favor. In all honesty, he'd probably find a way without their approval if they didn't end up giving it. From there it's just standing, and stumbling much more than he should, and one step at a time. Slow progress is still progress in its own right.  
  
The rain hasn't fallen yet when they finally allow him to wander out on his own. The nurses have him moving around pretty well on just one crutch, and the first thing he does is try to visit the others for the day.  
  
He makes for Lance's room off the bat, and a part of him isn't sure the Paladin won't send him out or throw something, maybe, but all he gets is a violent wave of gangly arms and an overenthusiastic welcome from the entirety of the crowd around his bed. The Paladin's family is big and rowdy and takes some getting used to, but by the time he finally asks whether the guy is okay, he's already in their good sights almost completely by accident- and that's something he finds he can live with.  
  
"Tell Shiro I said hey," Lance presses before he leaves. "And Hunk and Pidge if you get to them later- and give this to Allura!" Keith takes the small card from him before backing out, accompanied briefly by those leg-hugging kids and a last, loud call of well wishes from the others until the doors close. He flips over the card and finds himself containing a smile at the doodles.  
  
"Another one, huh?" Veronica comes in from the lift in time to catch him, meal box in hand while she approaches. Keith shows her the card and she snorts. "Boy's got it bad. Anyway, it's good to see you up and about, I think Shirogane's been worried."  
  
Keith shakes his head, but it's fond and she can probably tell. "He usually is."  
  
"Hey, doesn't mean my workload has to go up," She pushes lightly at his shoulder and backs toward the door, grin scarily reminiscent of her brother's. "Try to keep him in a good mood is all I'm saying, yeah? Take it easy, Keith." He huffs at the second assignment of the day and offers a wave before she's disappearing through the door, and the lift controls to the side are telling him to either board or get a move on. It occurs to him that with the mobility- he _could_.  
  
Some ridiculous idea comes at the thought, and Keith has to remind himself he's supposed to be taking things slow. He's practically in pajamas. It's been a day or so since he's made it to the showers. Self conscience isn't something he's terribly concerned with, but the thought of wandering Garrison halls like- like _this_ isn't exactly an appealing thought, and he glances down at the card in his hand instead.  
  
Shiro's been giving him space, Keith thinks. The least he can do is give the same, so he lets the lift doors close, and turns toward Allura's room with a quiet breath of acceptance. It's a starting point, somehow. His legs are finally in working order, the exhaustion is lifting enough to be manageable, the world is still turning- and no one says a hiatus of rest has to be easy, or even appealing, he thinks. It's the little victories that add up, and Keith feels good today.  
  
The others are asleep when he checks in on them. Some have visitors, Hunk has the Balmerans and they deserve a nod of their own for sneaking a great iron pot into the room for cooking, which Keith is almost tempted to open upon passing by and smelling. His mouth is watering when he returns to his room, but at least he's gotten something accomplished by the end of the morning. He spends the next couple of hours getting further used to the crutch.  
  
And then it's two o'clock. And Griffin is there with shitty takeout, uniform pristine, gloves warm when he gives Keith a hand and has him sit.  
  
"Looks like you're getting the hang of it," He mentions, putting the crutch away against the dresser.  
  
"I had a lot of people to lean on," Keith admits, and it's like another olive branch extended and taken. Griffin moves to the chair beside the bed and talks that day, in even words and tentative questions and somehow, it's unexpected. They get on the topic of flying, of space, of how the hell Keith found out he was Galra and it's easier than it should be to open up, and settle into the conversation as if it's nothing out of the norm.  
  
When he slips off again for another too-long nap he almost regrets it, but then it's evening, and the lights are on while clouds continue gathering above, and Griffin is there for the broadcast anyway. His mouth twitches when Keith rolls over and asks for a rain check on learning to walk again. The exercise was good, but his legs are aching and he feels dehydrated until Kinkade tosses him a water pack from the bed's end, then turns again to watch Veronica staggering toward them with a crowing Rizavi clinging to her back.  
  
It about accurately reflects the mood of the entire room; loud, excitable, a few offering rib-crushing hugs all around. Leifsdottir beams when Keith asks and explains simply, "Good news." In the end, he's sliding back into dark again, and has to take her word for it.  
  
He sleeps for a long time.  
  
...Too long.

 

* * *

 

 

When he's finally up again, Shiro and Griffin are hovering near the door while the lights come on, discussing something in low, agitated tones. Apprehension twists his gut into knots and he's swinging his legs over the side of the bed without thinking, accidentally setting off three different machines and making his presence known again. He expects something awkward out of the following interaction but what he gets is vastly different; Griffin's eyes going wide and Shiro's head whips around, and it would be funny if he didn't seem so frantic on getting to the bed again.  
  
It would be funny if Keith wasn't out for two days. Shiro is pale when he asks, paler when Griffin answers, and he's halfway to going for the doctor before Keith has his wrist in an iron grip. There's no telling which one the action shocks more, but he settles on Griffin when the pilot starts backing out in Shiro's stead.  
  
"I'm- gonna be okay," Keith says, haltingly. "Right?"  
  
Shiro's silence becomes something more than disconcerting. Keith thinks suddenly that they're both realizing, for the first time-  
  
-they don't know.  
  
He drags in a sharp breath when Shiro kneels in front of him. Eyes searching, fingers clammy when he takes the other's without precedence. "You're strong," He says. Too quiet, too rough underneath when his voice softens and he flattens their hands to the latter's chest. "Stronger than I am."  
  
Keith focuses in on the thud of his own heart. Shiro's palm over it, the lines shaking like he's afraid to touch. He shouldn't be. He's had that; from the moment Keith carried him out of a Garrison tent, he thinks, Shiro's had him and touch and everything. The nurses call it impulsive behind his back. The pilots call it devotion to his face and Keith would call it what it is, if he wasn't so convinced of what it couldn't be, if he wasn't such a coward about this kind of thing.  
  
So then maybe they're both scared. He inhales sharply again and curls his hand over Shiro's shoulder, gives a little. The doctors can wait. They already know, they've already seen; what's one more picture for the books, Keith thinks, when Shiro wraps his arms around again. He presses into Keith's middle, and doesn't move when the latter curls close in return. They need this. If nothing else- they've earned this.  
  
The room floods eventually; doctors and machine techs and a dozen others he still couldn't put a name to. Shiro presses closer like he doesn't want to let go, but he has to, in the end, and lab coats take his place in front of Keith to get down to it. He feels cold without the weight of another soul trapping him tight. A crowd of people have filtered in around him, but the room has never felt so empty before.  
  
It's a long day. The next one too, then the next, then Keith loses track. He's told not to use the crutch, but by the third -fourth- day his head is spinning with lack of stimulation, and he drags himself out to the courtyard. It's half defiance, half frustration- and all out of the ache in his lungs that can only be filled by fresh air. Clouds have continued to roll in over the Garrison during the week. He starts to wonder if it's ever going to rain or if it will pass without falling, depriving them of the only gain for losing real, earth sunlight for the past few weeks.  
  
Either way, he's staying. The courtyard is all loud colors and leafy, stretching branches shadowing in the space, attached to an older stone-brick part of the building that he doesn't remember being there before. It's nice, it's- quiet, and the people wandering by are mostly civilian or off-duty, so he leans his elbows over a high sill to breathe, soak in the humidity. Earth air tastes different now that he's been away long enough.  
  
Griffin finds him before long. Keith puts the food aside, and they distill in the darkening path for a while, silent. The air starts to chill when an evening wind stirs the greenery around them.  
  
He doesn't dream that night, or the next. Pidge tells him he looks like a wreck when they finally manage to escape their respective visitors to meet up in the hall, and he has no reason not to believe her. Keith slumps further against the wall just to be contrary. No- it's exhaustion again, still, but he doesn't hesitate to tell her they _all_ look like a damn wreck nowadays, and her nose wrinkles in response. "You kiss your mother with that mouth?"  
  
Krolia looks up from the bench across from them, hunched over another book with Kolivan, and both Paladins stifle a bout of choked laughter at the confusion. She isn't quite caught up with earth sayings and norms- but none of them are, now, and it's okay. Kolivan drags her back into their task while Pidge slumps against Keith and elbows him a little too hard. He hisses and elbows back without hesitation. They get found out eventually, sent back to their rooms, but Keith goes with minimal protesting this time; he's tired again, and he doesn't want to tempt fate by crutching around longer than he should be.  
  
The sky looks ready to burst when his vision finally closes on him, and it already has when he comes back later.  
  
Much later.  
  
There's no telling how long he's asleep this time. The revelation comes far into the night, woken by thunder and wind and a rush in his ears that he mistakes for blood at first. Someone shuffles around behind him. Kolivan, he thinks distantly- but the shadow is wrong and the bed doesn't dip enough when he sits, and Keith's mind is mush anyway from trying to keep his eyes open. It doesn't happen, in the end. Whoever it is shifts and unbuttons their cuffs in a little rustle of motion.  
  
"...Anything happen?" There's someone else in the room when Shiro touches his hand, puts a thumb to his wrist like a nervous habit. They must give a yes or no answer that Keith doesn't catch because then Shiro's palm is slipping away, and he's speaking again, a murmur of deep tones and something comforting that blurs together for a while. It rolls over him in a wave like sleep so often does now, but it's the welcome kind. Keith's fingers twitch toward him.  
  
"I still don't get it, sir." The voice is even, serious. Too familiar. "Why you assigned me in the first place if it was- like this."  
  
Shiro pauses for a long time, but something's changed when he responds. Keith tries to open his eyes again, and it's still no good- they're heavy like the feeling of sinking under the earth, like the hand passing over his head as if to check for a temperature. It's strange to be fretted over so much, stranger to hear Shiro so quiet, "Because this isn't about me." His thumb strokes an absent line down Keith's brow, voice rough and soft all at the same time in the stillness. "-Or what I want."  
  
His companion is silent for a long time beside the window. When he speaks with a certain finality, like closing the discussion off- Keith is suddenly sure it's been Griffin standing there the whole time. "Then maybe you haven't been paying as much attention as you thought, sir."  
  
A louder roll of thunder has Keith blinking at last. He barely glimpses an orange uniform as the doors close, as black clouds over the room like static and then it's just Shiro sitting at his side, sliding out of his jacket between flashes of broken lightning. He doesn't notice Keith awake and watching. His eyes are troubled.  
  
What's going on, Keith wants to ask, but thinks words are out of the question for now, while the rain is beating the building in deafening sheets and he's struggling to hold out with the comforting sound of earth around them. Someone must've convinced Sam to lower the particle barrier, probably Shiro, and probably so the others could get a taste of the weather from their rooms- but the slump of his bare shoulders and the bow of his head makes Keith wonder if it was worth it. How much has he done for the team today? How hard is he pushing himself out there?  
  
The dark returns to his vision. Keith doesn't try to open his eyes when the waves of it recede.  
  
Something trembling and warm tucks the quilt around his shoulders again, Shiro- tears patter over the hand on his middle and for a ridiculous moment, he thinks there must be a leak in the ceiling. There couldn't be; his room has several above it and even then it wouldn't get through the concrete jungle of the roof station. Oblivion is gathering surely for him but he hears when Shiro's breath starts coming fast, upset- like a terrible and intrinsic _wrongness_ in the still room.  
  
"Please." Fabric shifts in the space beside Keith's shoulder. "I just- need you to be strong. _Please_." Fingers curling, maybe. Someone, curling, bringing his hand against a wet cheek while the room fades around them.  
  
Keith dreams of rain in the desert, and wakes to an empty bed as it pours.  
  
He looks for Shiro as soon as he's steady on his feet. The water beats around the Garrison while the shields are still down, likely for morale boost while personnel are stuck indoors- but it's a distant crashing as he dons the soft jacket someone had dropped by for him. The weather is only supposed to get worse from here, he assumes, and leaves before the nursing staff make their rounds.  
  
Shiro's bed doesn't look slept in as he passes. It never really does, but the evidence of a sleepless night tugs something on Keith's heart, makes it real. He doesn't know what to make of last night, but he can make something of himself, so out he goes. Veronica stops him in the hall where he's headed for the lift.  
  
"Haven't seen the captain," She says, after confirmation of who Keith's after. It seems like a weighty statement when the space between her brows creases with thought. "Said he was crashing for the night after Holt got some drinks in him. I'd be worried about the guy too." She sends him off with a murmured _good luck_ and thumps his back as he goes. It's a little harder than necessary, just like most of her brother's gestures and physical contact, but it gets him moving. Veronica offers just a little smile when the lift doors almost close on him.  
  
Maybe it's nothing, he tries to reason. Maybe everyone's under the weather.  
  
It's weak even to his own ears. Keith is only a few floors up when he remembers he has no idea where he's going, but people move to let him pass by and he starts to figure it out. Most stop, or fall silent as he goes; some salute, and it's so different from the flight crews and nursing staff and off-duty personnel from before that he feels out of place. The Garrison has changed too, since he was here last, and that doesn't help either. Before long he's almost lost. Needless to say, it takes a long time to find the right floor and then Shiro's office somewhere within the maze.  
  
He'd been foolish to think it could be the same one. Shiro used to have a small space- a closet, really, but it was welcoming and slightly untidy and posted with a dozen little flyers about upcoming campus events on any given day. Keith used to think nobody could be that enthusiastic, it had to be Garrison mandate that kept those up there. Keith used to think a lot of things before Shiro became a lot of exceptions.  
  
He stops by the chair behind the desk and lets out a long breath. Sitting there just to spite was something he never outgrew, maybe, but it's different when he's here by choice and looking for someone who won't chew him out upon immediate entry. Someone he doesn't have to call sir, like an insult anymore and instead _sir_ like a private joke between old friends. The memory of it during that first day in the Lions pulls something in his chest. He wonders whether Shiro was laughing in the quiet of his own cockpit, closed-eyed and fond and shaking his head like he knew the day would come eventually. He must have.  
  
Keith isn't there long. It's evident that Shiro is in a meeting, maybe the hangar, so he scribbles a note and sticks it to the computer monitor, giving the bare room a last look-over before going.  
  
It's hard to imagine Shiro liking it that much anyway, he decides.  
  
People have started streaming into the halls as he makes for the lower floors. He garners a few more stares, a few more murmurs, some people coming up to ask if he's looking for the captain. They point him in the direction of some off-main lecture halls and he changes course to keep moving. His legs are starting to ache already.  
  
There's a commotion nearby when he makes it a few halls down. Shouting, something slamming like a book on the floor. Keith debates bothering one of the other offices and having someone with two working legs break it up, but he turns around after getting an eyeful of aggressive PDA, and decides nobody needs to see that on their lunch break anyway. _Lunch break_ , he then repeats to himself, and must take another hour to track down a clock to the left side of the building and up a few floors. It's half past twelve already. He's been lost in the Garrison for- the entire morning.  
  
Keith sits on a bench beneath the round dial, out of breath while he watches rain along the wall of frost-stained windows. There's a door on the other end, but it looks like a closet -a real closet, not makeshift office space- and the little alcove isn't half bad, he thinks, the longer he stays to rest his legs and then his eyes. It's not the best place for a nap. It's not the best place to be wide awake and restless either, though.  
  
The pale office lights flicker out once in a while, and it's harder to keep his eyes open. Keith breathes in the scent of recently vacuumed carpet and tries to blink himself awake for the seventh time.  
  
He fails, and he slips away like he always does.

 

* * *

 

 

He dreams about falling.  
  
It was a quiet thing at first, Lion darkening into nothingness, just the whistle of wind on the metal while they tipped. Down, down, a hundred thoughts slipping away with the altitude when Keith couldn't face the idea of leaving one untouched- so he left them all, plummeting blind, breathing out while the earth approached under his his feet and his weak knees and his stomach as it flipped with the adrenaline of free fall.  
  
Panic came in the last moments, he remembers. A dozen flashing images, his hands gripping the seat when his body rose out of it with the speed of dropping like a stone inside a metal cage; he'd be slammed into the controls when they finally hit the ground and thinking about that, about being _found_ , blood and bone and by Shiro, _Shiro_ -  
  
"Hey," Griffin says, and then Keith is snapping out of it and shaking and pushing away from the bench, the officer as he reaches to steady. " _Hey_. What the hell, you shouldn't be up here-"  
  
"You're not my keeper," His voice escapes in a rasp before he's got a handle on the situation, or his balance, and he staggers while fumbling for the crutch he'd left against the corner. "I'm not- what's it to- _damn_ it."  
  
He knows even as the words leave his mouth.  
  
It's the same reason Griffin's eyes go sharp and his face pale, expression tight when he discerns what this is about. His involvement in the crash. The food, sending his team to watch when he couldn't and, up until recently, his silence. He's under orders. He's been under orders the whole damn time. "Keith," He tries, when empty walls are passing to his right and the crutch is jammed into Keith's side and something like disappointment burns a heavy hole in his gut. The first time Griffin's said his name, he thinks arbitrarily, and wonders why it matters. "I didn't do this for him."  
  
Somehow it's a blow. Likely- because they both know it isn't true. Keith slows before the lift and takes a sharp breath in, tries to translate what he's feeling into words that don't quite form. "I know." It's not enough. There's too much about this that he can't comprehend other than why, why, _Shiro_.  
  
_Orders_ , Keith thinks, _jesus christ._ Some part of it still doesn't make sense. Shiro is afraid for him, for Keith- but has anyone been afraid for _Shiro_?  
  
Maybe I'm losing my mind, he follows up, and it's enough to propel him forward.  
  
Griffin doesn't follow him. The walk across a dozen new Garrison halls takes too much out of him. He's been up too long, walking too long- he's going to crash sooner or later, so he hurries. Shiro has to be here somewhere, somewhere, and Keith doesn't realize his blood is burning until he's made it into the officer's lounge, watching as half the room stands in a rush at the sight of him. They back away in a wide berth before he looks down and understands.  
  
"What the hell," Someone says. Keith mutters a defeated curse of his own, and closes his eyes. He thought he'd have more time.  
  
He thought he'd have more time.  
  
There's none left, now. Not with the nausea crawling into his gut and the colors moving under his skin again, and the thought of Shiro finding him passed out in some hallway taking over him in some terrible image. Someone mutters that he doesn't have permissions to the lounge, someone further off tells him to _shut up, that's the kid who put a blade through Sendak's throat_ and then the crutch is slipping from his fingers and he's pressing a heated hand into his eyes as the memory arises.  
  
The door opens before his back hits it. Keith's hearing buzzes in and out and when he's against something next there are arms coming around to steady him. Voices warp into a garbled, ringing mess from the lounge, but he catches _looking for you_ and _better call the medic down_ and he knows it's Shiro behind him by the way his chest rumbles when he speaks- by the way one hand over his ribs is cold and metal and careful.  
  
"How long was he like this?" There's an edge to the question, a tightness to the embrace that makes Keith want to hit something. "Why didn't anyone help him, what's going on-"  
  
"Stop," Keith manages. "Shiro- just- _stop_."  
  
The room falls silent. It's like they hadn't been expecting him to speak at all.  
  
The phrase _could hear a pin drop_ never carried much weight around the Garrison before. It doesn't still with the bustle and commotion and the way everyone's always gotta be somewhere, but suddenly the space is dead quiet- and Keith hears rather than sees the wary confusion when his hand is still pressed to his eyes. There's no light on the backs of them now. The glow is gone, and it takes a delayed moment for everything to click.  
  
"Out." The cutting force to the word stings, and it isn't even directed at Keith. "Out, now. _All of_ _you_." There's a shuffle of hasty boots past them, the air stirred from their stares as Keith shakes and realizes he's cold again, the brush of Shiro's jaw against the back of his head while he watches them go. He's stiff. Too stiff, almost rigid, and Keith doesn't know what to make of it when the doors close and his head tips forward and Shiro doesn't let him go in the emptiness. He doesn't let go, but he doesn't pull him in.  
  
For a terrible minute Keith thinks he won't.  
  
Shiro passes a hand over the door lock. It seals in a quiet noise before he brings the same hand up, over the one Keith has to his face and takes it away. The shock of near rejection strikes something in his chest, hot and horrible and new- but the shock of touch and tenderness soothes when they sink to carpet against hard metal, and Keith came here for a reason. No matter how assured Shiro feels in bracketing him in- he came here for more than comfort.  
  
"Talk to me," Keith starts, voice cracking to his own ears. He swallows, and it doesn't help. "Tell me- what's going on."  
  
Something hitches in the inhale he receives. Another long moment of silence. Another little shock where Shiro's hands settle on the high middle of his chest, head dips and presses to his spine as if in defeat.  
  
"Keith... I wouldn't know where to start."  
  
Something gives in the quiet admittance, words more breath than anything, like he doesn't trust himself. Keith couldn't be frustrated if he wanted, not with the honesty behind the words, when the body holding him starts to curl and tremble like they came as a revelation as much as a reveal. He's hurt, Keith thinks for a sudden moment, _I've hurt him,_ but there's no blood, no bruises. The magic seems to have gone dormant in his bones.  
  
Absence of explanation opens something in his chest, and- it's just him. It's been him every time.  
  
"How about- the part where it changed," He tries, and it takes a minute. Shiro seems to understand, nods against his neck.  
  
They stay there a long, long time, and Shiro tells him that love feels like falling.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yall thought you'd seen the last of me, huh? (honestly same, but here we are) As promised, the second chapter featuring some Shiro POV! Enjoy!

The Lion breaks when they get him out. Shiro isn't there because Shiro's been- everywhere, taking off toward one fallen beast to the other and by the time he makes it to Keith's, the pilots have carried him away themselves. He's told not to go inside, but does anyway. There's blood, shattered glass, everything he'd expected and everything he'd seen from the others, but it's the air that's different; barely three steps in there's electricity raising the hair on his arms, crackling along the dash. It jumps and sparks as if waiting to strike on its own. The lights have gone dim and flickering in sporadic waves. It's not just a wreck, inside- it's a festering wound.

They find out later that it's what saved him.

Shiro boards a transport plane and watches Keith's eyes move behind the lids. Medics on site are already telling him he shouldn't be in here, that there's a contamination risk, they need room to work, a dozen things he should listen to but doesn't. There's something rushing in his ears. Keith coughs, and it's a bloody, wet noise that gets through, locks Shiro's feet where they're planted beside the gurney, tells him that something is horribly wrong. His blood- it's glowing.

The rush increases tenfold when they notice. There are words: infection, parasite, quintessence poisoning, too many that Shiro doesn't catch what they eventually settle on, but all he knows is that the light moving in broken patterns under Keith's skin couldn't be good in any universe, much less the one where he just fell out of the sky. Shiro's taken a good beating with that last battle, but it's his best friend twitching and rasping on a blood-slick table, his best friend that's been trapped in what could've been his tomb for hours and hours and darkness. Someone shakes him while the plane starts moving and he snaps out of it. People watch and work, expectant, awaiting orders, and Shiro nearly gives some just to appease the rushing medical staff or ease the foreign guilt of such easy deference- but then Keith's head rolls with the tilt of the vehicle, and he knows his priorities enough to drop the rest.

"Hey." He doesn't move at the palm planted beside his head. "Keith, you're in the transport with me, okay? We're gonna get you out of here." Maybe it doesn't get through. It's fine, Shiro insists to himself, and brackets Keith with the other hand, leans to repeat it while the engines drown everything out of the world- including his voice. There will be time later, talk later, when Keith's blood isn't visible like someone has a flashlight under his veins and they don't have an audience consisting solely of overworked nurses trying to do their jobs around him. Stepping back is no longer an option.

He finds he can live with that. They give him something, and part of Shiro still refuses to comprehend the blood, the light, the way Keith's face smooths as if at peace- and then the glow flickers and fades like it did in the Lion, ebbs away altogether. The frantic movement around him relaxes some, and he's stable. Shiro rolls the word around in his mouth and listens to talk of quarantine while they rise through the air.

For a moment it doesn't register, but then the image arises of Keith waking to masks and needles, _alone_ \- and the worry is baseless, the stipulation desperate to Shiro's own ears- "If he goes, I go."

There's no taking that back, and he's lucky they never follow through with the notion. Three days in, Keith is still asleep and his lion is still buried and Shiro is arguably in the worst shape out of them all. He can't sit at the bed or sleep in the one they roll in _just in case_ after the words leave the nurse's mouth and he's cold, all over- almost as cold as Keith. One day Shiro brushes over his hand by accident, and it takes three officers alongside the nursing staff to convince him that they haven't been neglecting their duties. It's ridiculous until it's not. They're doing the best they can and Keith stops breathing anyway. Shiro starts to discover that fear tastes like the copper of his own blood when he bites down, feels like a lump of barbed wire in the back of his throat and sounds like a thousand skipped heartbeats playing out at half-speed. It happens so quickly and it lasts forever and he learns to hate _silence_. Stable, they tell him afterward, and he thinks he's going to be sick.

He leaves the room with something anxious and heavy expanding through his ribcage.

Keith gets worse.

Somehow it doesn't feel right to stay and watch while he's unaware, so Shiro starts turning to his new title and responsibilities to fill the absence. The exact duties of his new position are indistinct at best but between incessant debriefs, re-establishing communications and taking stock of weaponry in case of another attack, he's never been busier. It's something to do at least while the team starts to wake up and his spirits start to lift just a little with productivity. Sam is the only one telling him to take things slow, but even then it's like an old joke between them. Matt makes it back as soon as he gets the news and Pidge wakes the day he gets there, and Shiro wants to laugh, say _of course._ Hunk said once that the two are like the same person. Shiro remembers wanting to answer that family is like that sometimes, but the recollection comes out of something tinged with sadness.

It's hard to digest some of the memories. They're his, and Shiro is glad to have them, but- it's hard.

Keith wakes up after his speech. Shiro hurries but he's missed him in the time the nursing staff keep him from bursting into the room; Krolia squeezes his shoulder, Kolivan seems troubled, and there's nothing he can do but sit and wait and hope to get lucky twice in one day. He does, in the end, and there's still no time to take him in. Keith turns his head, blinks slow and a little pained, mumbles _go ahead_ while people call him back to work. Shiro shouldn't, he thinks, but he shouldn't have a hand in Keith's hair while the room starts to fill up and it happens anyway. There's something as upsetting to having a crowd as there's something soothing to have a point of contact.

Griffin stops him on the way out, checked concern written over his face. He'd been there, Shiro remembers, taking the rubble apart for Keith, picking him out in the aftermath, and twists of discontent comes unfamiliar at the thought. The feeling takes a sharp turn into confusion when Griffin turns the question back on Shiro- _are you alright?_ He thinks it's a joke at first. No one is alright and no one's been left untouched by the invasion, the occupation, the battle and everything in between, and Shiro wants to tell him that or maybe shred the inquiry into pieces like what the war did to all he holds dear, but it's ridiculous even as he thinks it. What he wants is for Keith to be the one asking, and he can't even have that.

It must show on his face. Griffin casts an uneasy look back to Keith as he lies motionless again and fiddles with something in his hands. "I just- I need to help." Shiro realizes it isn’t a card through numb horror. It's a scrap of red metal. It's- a piece of Keith's suit. "I owe it to both of you."

Griffin doesn't owe him jackshit. It's not a fragment of _Shiro's_ broken armor that he's carrying around.

He passes a hand over his eyes. "Alright." Faintly, he thinks he's going to regret this sooner rather than later. "There... there is something you can do for me."

It's a trainwreck of an idea. Make sure he's eating, make sure he's not in _pain_ ; it's nothing the nursing staff won't do, and they both know, but there's selfishness in the request he can’t turn away. Shiro remembers doctors and techs and the way hours became years in the perpetual state of waiting for news and he doesn't want that for Keith, doesn't want the alternative of hovering overbearing, either, but it shouldn't worry him as much as it does. They've always had a gray area for each other, but Shiro's become afraid of finding a _line_ recently.

He'd been on the cusp once- twice, he corrects, before. A new body and long hair falling into his eyes, the same guilt of grateful overwhelm as Keith gave up his room without a second thought. _How many times are you gonna save me_ , some half-tease, the weight of his smile and a promise made too personal by the dark and the care and the simplicity of it, _as many times as it takes._ Shiro's sleep was troubled that night. Blue eyes, quiet conviction coming back to him, the smell of Keith on the blankets and realizing he hadn't slept in another man's bed since Ad-

The pen in his hand snaps during the middle of a meeting. Distantly Shiro hears someone ask whether he's listening or not, but there's a rushing in his ears that makes answering impossible. Human hearts aren't supposed to beat that loud, he thinks, and tries to remember how to breathe when it feels like free fall again, the ground approaching at a speed no amount of sim time could ever prepare him for. His throat constricts.

They send him out. He protests at first and then heads to the med floor, something in his chest loosening only when he makes it to the room and finds Krolia absent for a turn. Keith tips his head against the pillow at the sight of him. It's still too much- the way his face goes open and pleased, and his gaze is something private in the gold washed room like it had in that green one all that time ago. Shiro can't settle this with himself. Not then, not now, and it's almost a mercy when some commotion down the hall shocks him into movement, ends the visit before it even begins, has him standing in a hospital room with someone else's knife in his hand and something unreasonably defensive burning through his gut, the other side of the coin, manifesting on a whim in too sudden and too harsh a reminder.

Griffin asks, because of course he does as they linger beside the lift doors, half observing the hall for whatever unrest caused him to fly for Keith's room in the first place. "...so what was that- back there?"

Shiro clears his throat, straightens while he takes his eyes from Keith's door again. He's been having more trouble pulling himself out of his thoughts lately, especially without the latter at his side to question, and considering the swap twinges unhappiness through his gut. "It's- it's nothing. You have a good eye for danger, Griffin." Oh, Krolia would laugh at him for that. Shiro shuts the realization away as a door opens to their left, and a slew of medics rush someone by gurney down the hall. His mind is eased to know that the upset isn't coming from any of the Paladins' rooms, but it's not much better to watch the way Griffin pales when he gets a glimpse.

"I know that kid," he says, quieter than usual while the squeak of wheels fades. "I... I think I flew with that kid."

Another door slams down the hall.

"We all flew with someone," Shiro responds, and it's just another hollow pain added to the new ache. Both shiver at the shriek going up from behind closed doors, tapering off into a low moan before it dissipates, becomes an echo down sterilized tile of empty hall and locked knobs. The sun continues to sink below the horizon past dusty windows. It will come up in the morning same as ever, Shiro thinks with a long breath, no matter the losses of today or the promise of them tomorrow, and maybe Griffin has the same line of thought as he backs to the lift. They've seen so much war already, but there's more to come. As the week goes on, talk of further precautions circulates through the Garrison, and Shiro gets called to an investigative team before long. The meetings were one thing but accompanying subsections of the research department to pilfer Galra fighter wreckage is another, one that he can't say he wasn't expecting, and Iverson tells him everyone is working outside their comfort zone these days. Shiro tells him there's nothing more uncomfortable than being dead, at any rate.

"If that was a joke Shirogane, we're going to have a long talk about what proper respect/ looks like around here." His open eye twitches like Shiro is talking about lives lost in the fight.

Shiro pinches the bridge of his nose and shakes his head at himself. "I think you... you might want to sit down for this one, commander."

It takes a lot of words. They don't have time, but Shiro tries to explain as best he can, leaving out the bulk of the astral plane for simplicity's sake, and Iverson's jaw has gone slack by the end of it. There are questions -of course there are- but nothing he'd expected and nothing he quite knows how to answer straight to the man's face, including- "Allura transferred my consciousness from the Black Lion. Since then the bond just hasn't... been there."

Iverson's brows twist in skepticism. "You're trying to tell me that a bond forged in the dimension between worlds just-  _vanished_? That's not the only thing, but I find it extremely hard to believe." He's got a point there. Even Shiro's been grappling with some sort of close to the cut ties between Paladin and Lion, if only from an objective confusion. Maybe a bit less when he thinks into it. He's come to terms with the change since dealing with bigger things, like being put into the body of a clone that nearly killed his own team, but the loose end is something to pick on every once in a while.

Mostly during the aforementioned meetings, during the next week. They're long and important, but tedious too and Shiro is suffering under the weight of leaving the others on their own while they recover. Papers are signed, plans conducted, tapes stored to mark the developments they record for posterity. It's a stifling process. Sometimes he isn't exactly sure why he's there, and then someone will get a stat wrong about the Empire or Voltron or Lotor's battle methods, and he's reminded- though sometimes it still doesn't seem like enough, especially returning to Keith's room for the night and finding him listless, exhaustion in dark smudges under his eyes. Sometimes it pulls his heart in half while he sits at the edge of the bed, hand hovering over his pulse or his head or his marked jaw for a brief second.

He doesn't work up the nerve to touch until a few weeks in- and then it's because of panic and pain and it doesn't count, it doesn't count, Shiro tells himself it just doesn't count when he's pulling Keith up and his blood is glowing again under Shiro's hands. The whole thing is nauseating, and he's not the one who's sick.

"It's burning," Keith rasps into his shoulder, secure in his arms but only because Shiro is holding too tight. "It's burning-"

"I know," he manages, and watches the nursing staff move while several machines ping loudly around them. _Fix this_ , he wants to say, _please_ \- but they were at a loss before in the transport, and they're at a loss now. He can see it in their eyes. Shiro hasn't been a patient to several helpless physicians in years now, but some things he'll never forget, and it closes something cold around his lungs. He grits his teeth and holds Keith tight for a minute longer before he's made to leave again. This isn't the worst thing either of them have endured, but separation is a different level of ache in his bones. "...I know."

Sometimes that seems like the only thing he can say. Uselessness is a tangible feeling, so Shiro does what he can, and in the end it's always meant letting go. Keith's body slackens in his arms after another injection, strings cut like the morning they took him from the Lion, glow flickering and dying through his too-hot limbs. Shiro brushes hair from his closed eyes and almost doesn't let the doctors have him. It's so much, suddenly. He did this. He _did_ this.

"Shirogane," someone says. "We have tests to run."

"Be careful," he answers, and has to work his jaw before finding more words. "Be- please- be careful with him." Keith's had a lifetime of fire and fight and rough hands. He deserves something easier, here, at least, something kinder.

Griffin reports back that evening with news. Shiro would ask himself, but he can't seem to work up the nerve to go back in that room- not after the way he'd held him, too tight, not after the way Keith's rasping seared itself into his memory. They need space, and Keith needs time to heal and Shiro refuses to hover while that happens, so he waits patiently while Griffin tells him that to hear the news would be self-defeating. Shiro snaps another pen and he talks.

Months. That's how long it will take, Griffin says, and Shiro stops thinking that time is a cruel master.

It’s a sentence.

 

 

 

He stops visiting altogether. There's work to be done, and days to be spent healing, and Griffin's got the in between covered by the time they settle into a rhythm. More check-ins, more often, but not so many that Keith will get an idea of what they're doing, even if it's wrong to go behind his back and Shiro admits as much to Matt when they get some time to catch up later in the week. Matt gets a troubled look in his eyes that doesn't go away until he comments, and even then, it hasn't left completely.

"I guess it makes everyone do crazy things," he tells Shiro, and the way he's studying the latter is reminiscent of their days working on faulty systems, a year's worth of scratching their heads over new problems during the Kerberos journey. Shiro remembers thinking he'd give anything for company- remembers regret and tears and anger when he imagined someone on Earth glancing up at the sky every now and then, someone who wouldn't be waiting for him- and someone else, someone who wouldn't need him when he finally got home. War always makes people do crazy things, but Shiro thinks that part didn't come until after and Matt snorts when he says so, then shakes his head like Shiro doesn't get it. Maybe he does.

Maybe he just likes to have his feet on the ground for earth-shaking revelations, and it feels as though he's still trapped in a metal box some ungodly distance from the planet, aiming for a point in the desert through a haze of blurred consciousness. He'll have to run out of fuel eventually, but somehow the thought doesn't scare him as much as it should.

He wonders how long Keith watched him fall the first time.

Matt leaves him for Kolivan, likely to reminisce days where Voltron and Shiro weren't around to give him gray hair, and the latter's being called away to another meeting as it is. He picks up his bag and spends the next four hours convincing a stuffy room that overpopulation isn't something they need to worry about right now as aliens flood the planet. They have enough self-sustaining resources, and new technologies provide for more people all the time. Apparently this is a difficult concept for some of them to grasp.

He goes through the motions. Someone whispers behind his back that resignation is the last stage of grief, and he snaps something that has to do with both their rank and less than appreciated opinions in a moment that isn't his proudest. Shiro knows how to grieve but what he _doesn't_ know is how he's supposed to grieve two people at the same time when one isn't dead, when what he's mourning isn't a life but a year year alone in the desert and not only isolation but time to work against while the first one he'd let so many walls down for was missing, presumed dead, lost on some damn _pilot error_. Shiro has his work to bury himself in and Keith had- what? Sand and sweat and an empty house, a bike that his best friend would never fly again?

Even their pain is skewed, Shiro thinks at random one day, while he's sprinting past a crowd of shocked personnel for who he knows they're staring at. His lungs burn, Griffin's message of _get down here, now_ still flickering across his watch as he pushes through.

Keith isn't breathing again. It takes words and rasps and his head in Shiro's neck while they get away from unabashedly curious bystanders, but by then he's sliding back into whatever nightmare has been plaguing his waking moments, and Shiro knows which one from the way his head jerks after he's set down again, grappling and pleading with Shiro in deep shuddering breaths that don't form words right away. His face screws up in pain. It exaggerates the mark carved into his cheek, crawling with a quintessence they still don't fully understand- and the memory of getting it is what he must be reliving when he twists and claws and Shiro has to fight him down before he hurts somebody.

"Keith," he tries, cracked.

"I love you," Keith chokes. "I love you, I _love you_ -"

He thinks he's going to be sick.

The doctor intervenes, finally, hurrying in with orders and questions that Shiro couldn't answer if he wanted to. He's preoccupied with the way Keith gives one last shudder and then lays still, grip going slack, head rolling toward Shiro's direction as the glow fades and shivers apart before their eyes. The nurse that'd been preparing an injection slows and then stops altogether as the worst of it passes, and the other two fix Shiro with an unreadable look while Keith's breathing evens, quiets. It's over as soon as it had started.

"Christ, Shirogane," one of the staff mutters.

He swallows hard to get a response out, and brushes the back of his knuckles over Keith's scar. "What does- what does it _mean?_ "

He almost regrets asking. It means they have a catalyst. It means they have new tests, questions; what he's not telling them about that last druid blast, what _exactly_ it is that Komar magic feeds off of. They know about quintessence and they know Allura's power, not much else- but when Shiro breaks the truth about his death to them, it's dire in a way they shouldn't understand. Iverson hurries in halfway through the recount, and he tries to go on to the way something, a part of him, tethered back at first to the Lion and then to Keith's single, broken sob when all he could do was watch his life pass in front of his eyes, and it's too much. With Keith right there in his arms, it's too much.

They're still ruling it quintessence poisoning, in the end; symptoms of excessive sleep and disorientation brought on by extreme emotional strain, but Shiro knows it's just another long-winded way to say that there's no telling what the hell is wrong with him. One of the staff keeps looking between him and Keith and taps out something on their tablet clipboard like he won't notice, and he does, but there's nothing he can do about it. They'd all heard. It shouldn't make him so anxious and not because he isn't ashamed, but because who he's ashamed _of_ ; Keith is something he'll never resent if his life depended on it. Keith is- the guilt he'll never let go of, not when his trust was earned so long ago with work and sweat and action because he hated shallow words, Shiro's broken heart stitched a little under his last hug at the launch, a million things after that made them so inseparable and _time_.

Time, is what the doctor keeps telling him. Keith needs time, and it's like the universe is trying to repay some cosmic debt to the beating it's given him. Shiro doesn't have that kind of excuse for his hesitance.

He'd hit the desert straight on, didn't he?

Rumors spread fast in the Garrison, even with a few years and too-busy nursing staff that should in all honesty get a vacation instead of the latest chatter on higher up drama, which means that Shiro hears things. Griffin does too; they range anywhere from Keith's condition, how the team is taking it, what the Komar means as a threat now that they know how powerful corrupted quintessence can be and of course, what it's done in the past. He tries to ignore it and focus on his work, but the weight of eyes on his back becomes unbearable throughout most of the next week. He has to get out, somewhere, somehow, so he doesn't protest Kolivan's stiff invitation to take a ride and simply _goes_.

Coran and Iverson accompany them, oddly enough. He gets the sense that it's an intervention of sorts, but even that might top being stuck at his desk for another sleepless night, and it's still something else to do beside getting wrapped in his mind for hours on end in more meetings. There's not much purpose in the task from the get-go. They drive the length of the city, deposit MREs to a few shelters, mill around the engine when the vehicle inevitably breaks down and try to figure out what's wrong with it. Between the four of them, it's running again within minutes. Coran regales them with a few tales of old Altea on the way around town and ropes Shiro into listening once Iverson gets a call that needs Kolivan's attention too, and it isn't so bad, once they walk the officer through what to do on the other end and he gets a history lesson while they're at it. The trip ends in a few contained grins while they pull up back where they started.

Kolivan takes him aside before Shiro can follow the others through the doors. He resigns himself to the impending, but probably prompt assignment of some other task to complete, and it catches him off guard when none comes. Instead the Blade grips his shoulder in something like an instinctual gesture, abrupt and well-meaning.

"Keith is going to recover eventually," he tells Shiro, without preamble, "but this time I'd advise you to take advantage, Shiro. The trials didn't leave either of you much room for coming to terms."

He tries to wrap his head around the vague suggestion and comes up empty when the Blade takes his leave. It doesn't fully sink in until a week later and several late night gatherings in front of the screen in Keith's room, when work has consumed him again and fighters are finally off the ground after upgrades, and he hasn't been there in days except to sleep and check in with the staff out of habit. His eyes land on Keith's face beside Griffin's laugh, the comment about the wreckage, how the former goes puzzled again and half starts a question he's been dreading, one that might as well knock his good intentioned orders right out of the sky along with Shiro's landing gear-

"It won't happen again, sir," Griffin responds, monotone after Shiro gets him into the lift at the end of the hall. He grits his teeth at the use of rank, even if it was his own doing, and punches the number to his new office floor. "I thought he knew how serious it was."

Shiro looks at Griffin and wants to say that he never does- never lets on that he does, at least, and doesn't know how to explain it without falling into the unconscious list of everything that makes Keith dear like that. Shiro looks at Griffin and comes to the ground moving realization that he'll never know what it was like to fall through an atmosphere because Keith wouldn't let go, crawl his way back from the brink of oblivion because Keith said his name, _just_ the way he said his name- Griffin doesn't know how Keith screamed himself into the astral realm and how he's razed entire Galra occupations, how his ears go red when he laughs, and his swearing is like a sailor when he stubs his toe but he can fight for two days with nothing but a _plea_ at the end of it for-

Shiro.

_Wait_.

That gray area again, seeing him broken on the floor, undone by a hologram that had shaken him just as bad as watching the fight. Maybe neither of them are quite as subtle as he'd thought.

The one thing Griffin could know. Shiro glances at him with the thought and gets only silence, dead-ahead eyes, something like an apology in the stiffness. It guilts him back into the matter at hand. "...at ease. What he doesn't know, he's bound to find out anyway." Shiro would have to be an idiot to think he could pull one over on Keith indefinitely. He thought in the beginning, _maybe_ , so he supposes that makes him idiot enough to count. Griffin finally cracks when he voices this and fails at suppressing a grin, murmuring something about how that makes Shiro's only other damage control more or less an idiot too.

"Your containment radius needs a little work," he responds dryly before stepping out of the lift.

"Yes, sir."

"Remember that you're not doing this for me, Griffin."

"Always, sir."

The updates continue to roll in, after that. Shiro has problems to solve stacking up on his mental list of things to do and Griffin has his own, made apparent by the amount of times they run into each other in the hangar nowadays. The interaction isn't unappreciated, even when it's only for the officer to admit that he'd put his team up to checking in on Keith, unable to make it with several other things on his plate during the week; it isn't a bad call, all things considered, and the pilots seem to like them both well enough even if they make themselves scarce every time Shiro so much as glances their way. It takes some getting used to.

He hadn't exactly accounted for that- there were always certain natural dynamics within flight teams at the Garrison, and in this one it almost seems like Griffin has broken an inch ahead. He's no longer the abrasive but sullen cadet who'd gotten a fistful of Keith's frustration after some failed sim. His teammates relax around him, even look to him for instruction, so when his attention's been turned on Keith then theirs is too, and Shiro is mostly glad to be left out of the picture in those moments.

People still talk. The MFE pilots are a different kind of fascinated when it comes to the Red Paladin- but people still talk.

 

 

 

He turns back to his work. The speculation about Komar magic or _science_ , as Matt continues to stubbornly insist, is a point of contention among the rebuild effort's board. Shiro gets it. They don't want to poke the snake, so to speak, especially when there are more immediate concerns to turn their attention to. They don't want to open that particular can of worms but eventually _someone_ reminds the team of the alien _robot_ at the bottom of the ocean; Shiro leaves for _five minutes_ and Slav somehow manages to get every single vote on digging the damn thing up, halfway to putting his plans in order by the time the captain returns. The ensuing chaos is... unpleasant, to say the least. There's no rest after that.

Keith's current state remains the same, and the lack of change is almost worse than any. Shiro's stress levels go up with the amount of time he is thus forced to spend going between Slav's demanded meetings and the rest of his regular duties, and soon enough there's no time to visit anyone. Lance, he gets to once, but only because Veronica marches him out of the boardroom and the nearest quiet space is her brother's sickbed- though Shiro has to confide to her later that Lance is, by no meaning of the word, _quiet_ when they finally appear in the doorway to get an earful of how they'd just missed Allura before arriving. Shiro ends up staying, if only for the distraction.

He jerks himself out of a nap in the office one night, adrenaline on his shallow breath, Keith's shield shattered apart in his mind's eye. Griffin is the one shaking him this time and saying _no change_ like it's not what he was already expecting.

"Who's with him?" Shiro fumbles out of his chair before he's fully awake.

"My guys," Griffin answers tiredly, like he's been up just as long. "Are you-?"

He mumbles something clipped in response, and brushes past him for the hall. It's harsh, maybe, but the agitation only lasts as long as they travel back to the med-wing again, before the pilots scramble to attention when he paces -he's _not_ stomping- into the room, and leave him with Keith's still body, Keith's tired smile, Keith's _Shiro, hey, what's wrong?_ Everything, everything that keeps telling him how this ends is wrong- but Keith doesn't need wrong. Keith doesn't need Shiro's wrong or Shiro's attempts at right, Shiro's line down the middle of how many times he's been here before.

"Nothing," he answers instead, and it sets a flicker like dying lightning through his skin. The mistake is realized too late -it's _his_ fault, dammit, he should know better by now- and all Shiro can do is shake him, reach, cradle his head when the quintessence responds and drags him under again and makes him say impossible things like-

"Stay," Keith slurs, fingers hooked in his collar. "Stay... please..."

His voice goes all whispered-hopeful near the end, and Shiro doesn't know how to be grateful for it.

"I would," he starts helplessly, pushing the bangs from his face, remorse bubbling up from the hundredth foreign place when the glow dies as quickly as it had come, taking Keith's responsiveness with it. Shiro never knew there could be so many different names for a nosedive like this. He wants to bury the burn in his eyes against Keith's neck and hide, hide, _tell him_ but what could he say that could make this better, and why would he _try_ when the body in his arms is heavy with rest again? "I would," he repeats plaintively, because it's the reminder he shouldn't need when everything in him is screaming to stay. It's not enough. Keith's hair pools in inky waves when Shiro eases his hand from his neck, and the weight of the nurse staff's eyes have joined Griffin's from the door.

He's not questioned by either tonight. Another pair of blue eyes has trained past everyone and into the room, startling both with how similar they are to Keith's and how serious. Krolia doesn't look at Shiro when she puts a warning hand to his chest beside the door, a motion as comforting as it should be terrifying, and Kolivan seems hardly sympathetic from the background when her tone comes just as sharp. "Your presence seems to elicit a positive quintessential response, you know. It also seems to be the only kind Keith refuses to ask for himself." Something in his throat lumps. Her head turns to lock him in place with a look, voice leaving no room for argument. "I suggest you think about both very deeply, Shiro."

The invisible chains don't disappear when Krolia removes her hand, brushes into the room again. Shiro inhales a ragged lungful of air and tries not to listen to the conversation at his left.

"It attacked our base," muses Kolivan, too quiet to be for Shiro. It's a ridiculous comfort to think that Griffin's questions will at least be answered by _someone_ around now- but his boots are rooted to the floor with memory and a sudden, strangled understanding that nearly conjures up the urge to laugh. "The Lions have always been connected very strongly with their Paladins."

"Then..." Griffin's puzzlement is frustrated in the same way Shiro feels. "Why isn't Keith's responding? If his quintessence is- messed up, then it should be able to fix it, right?"

The Blade's attention flicks toward Shiro, and his silence is long. The floor is dropping out from under them all. "The Black Lion is sometimes a fickle being. Prone to... indecision."

It's not a low blow, but Shiro takes it like one anyway. He doesn't whirl, exactly, but his feet move on their own after a flash of white hot and gripping cold warps through his insides, unbearable. "The situation is unprecedented." Diplomatic enough that he could laugh at himself if his teeth weren't gritted so tight, Shiro closes his hands into fists and forces the fragments of an explanation out to Kolivan's stony expression. "Even if I wanted to, even if it could help- our bond is gone, and there's a reason I didn't survive that Komar blast. Keith has _always_ been stronger than I am." The Blade's silence is nearly worse than Griffin's intake of air, a pause that ripples through the empty hall like water.

"Sorry sir," Griffin starts. "But you are so full of shit."

He walks away, and his hands are fists, and Shiro’s lungs are cold.

Debate around fishing the Altean bot from the ocean grows, inside the meeting rooms and out. Most of it stays away from the Paladins and their families- after all, they aren’t up for an excavation and nobody wants to go looking for a fight, but Shiro would be an idiot to think he could keep anything from Allura. She makes her way up to a conference later in the week, and what follows is arguably the most terse three hours of everyone else’s lives. They discuss a retrieval team’s expenses, whether the Garrison would even commission a trip, how public opinion would sway their disclosure of findings; big, political and military talk from all sides, and a call for at least two months of further discussion before a decision can be made. It’s what Shiro’s been dreading for weeks. Allura comes out more stone-faced than he’s ever seen.

“I need a drink,” she says, and that’s how they end up next to Matt in some closed-cluttered lab office with two shot glasses and a bottle of something Shiro can’t read the label of. It’s Balmeran, maybe. Allura downs half of it in one sitting, pushes it into Shiro’s hands, and goes rifling through the file cabinet for the infamous Holt stash that everyone knows about and nobody wants to risk looking for; he watches on in faint amusement, but can’t bring himself to warn her off of it, so they end up sharing. Matt can bust his ass when they’ve got this crisis under control.

“How old are you, again?” Shiro asks, an hour later. Neither of them are trashed yet, but they aren’t sober either. It’s a happy middle. He wants to puke anyway. “Three hundreds?”

“Old enough,” she groans, and pushes another plastic measuring cup into place. Somewhere along the line they’d started sorting and haven’t stopped. “Lance is so young, Shiro. So quiznacking young.”

“About that,” Shiro says, propping his chin in one palm. “I meant to ask. How did you know?”

She laughs like nothing about the vagueness softens some blow he’s dealt her. “I knew because it was different with Lotor, the sort of- variety of butterflies in my stomach that would happen, see? Lotor was a jittery kind, the blood-boiling kind. Lance is... steadier.” She tucks her chin over her crossed arms and sighs, lashes lowering. If Shiro didn’t value his life, he’d call the expression that crosses her face afterward a pout, but as fate would have it. “I don’t suppose it matters, in the end- how one falls. There’s always that fifty-fifty chance that you’ll land somewhere unpleasant and alone or- if you’re lucky, somewhere new and exciting.” She scratches at the table, and quiets. “This is about Keith, isn’t it?”

Shiro doesn’t grace that with an answer until she mutters a little _thought so_ and pushes another cup along the row. “Yeah. I guess it is.”

“Do not diminish his conviction by hiding behind my excuse, Shiro. It doesn’t reflect well on either of us.”

“That’s not- it’s just that Lance isn’t-”

“No,” she says, and takes his cup, dangles it out of reach, points with the other hand. “He isn’t Keith. And thank quiznak for it, too, but don’t kid yourself. We both know how it feels to love a man that’d be better off without us, don’t we?” Shiro doesn’t know what to say to that, but he knows he can’t think about Keith anymore, not when Allura sets his cup down, hard, and looks ahead emptily. Her jaw twitches. “I have been- so prepared to die these past months, to sacrifice and forfeit and lose and- now that I have the chance to live, I’m afraid it will be taken from me again. That I’ll-” her hand waves in a vague gesture, “-muck it up. With Lance. With everything.” She shakes her head when Shiro touches her shoulder, and her lip trembles when she repeats, “he’s so young, Shiro. He’s so young.”

When Shiro pulls her in for a hug, there’s no resistance, and they stay there for a long, long time. Her shoulders shake. He pats her back, and she gives a little hiccuping laugh. “We are pathetic, aren’t we?”

“No,” Shiro disagrees, and untangles. “You’re not. You’re gonna figure this thing out with Lance, and whether it works or not, we’re all on your side. You fought for this, Allura.” She sniffs, but smiles, then wipes her eyes. “Come on. I think it’s late enough.”

Allura squeezes his arm before leaving, and something loosens in Shiro’s chest.

Keith drifts for two days. Shiro hovers, finally, but only because he’s been banned from meetings until he and Iverson can see eye to eye on living arrangements; what he has now is good, but it’s painfully temporary and Keith isn’t going to need him around forever. It used to be a relief to know, but now it’s- glass in his throat and hollow in his chest, the fuzz in his ears when Griffin asks whether he’s eaten anything the whole day. Shiro nods his pain away, _yes_ , lies without thinking and Griffin is the first in a long time to see through it. He looks away. Shiro clears his throat.

“Sorry,” Griffin says, then tacks on a, “sir.”

“Remember what I said about not doing this for me?” Shiro asks. “You’re getting a little close, here.”

Griffin says nothing for a long moment, and then he’s breaking attention to pace, shove his hands through his hair, grip the rail beside Keith and breathe, and push off of it again. “You saved him. No, all due respect, _sir_ , you saved him, and then he saved me and I can’t- you’re the one that’s-” Shiro opens his mouth and closes it again, and Griffin comes to a stop, eyes on the ground, shaking his head. “I don’t understand you sometimes, Captain. We all saw the footage. We _all_ saw what he did to Sendak.”

“That has- nothing to do with this.” Lies, lie. “Keith’s always been a fighter.”

“ _For you.”_

“For himself! You think he ran off into space to keep me company? You think he faced down the most vicious army in the galaxy, over and over again, got stranded on alien planets, fought machines in his free time, spent two years on a _fucking_ whale to be _with me_ , Griffin?” He jabs a finger at the pilot’s chest, angry at him for bringing this on, angry at himself for rising to it. “You don’t know _shit_ about what he’s been through!” The pause extends. Griffin’s face is stone, unflinching, and his mouth is tight- he’s far past the line but they both are, hashing it out in front of Keith’s oblivious presence in the background and dancing around the unspoken accusation like a live bomb. They both step back at the same time.

“Shiro...?” A rustle snaps him out of it. Keith shifts, rolls up, fumbles to disconnect wires. “Wha’s the... how long was I?” He leaves the fragment alone and looks up when the two approach.

_Leave_ , Shiro screams at himself, but it’s impossible when Keith has his wrist in a tight hold and is pulling him back, back, longing written into the tired lines of his face. Griffin makes a little sound behind them and goes for the doctor. When Keith asks, Shiro can’t lie, or maybe won’t, and ends up in the very place he’s dreaded for both of them; on his knees for Keith, holding his heart in one palm, wrapping two arms around his middle and hiding like something afraid and unsure and sleep-deprived after losing one constant in his past that keeps coming back to haunt. Keith curls over him like it’s second nature to shelter someone who closely resembles the first, and Shiro wonders if he would fight his ghosts for him. His eyes sting because he knows the answer.

The room crowds again, and Griffin pulls him off. He goes without a complaint.

 

 

 

The Lion is eerily still, dimmed except for the constant underglow around the edges, violet on a thick darkness that pulls him in and in. Everything's been cleaned and nothing is out of place and Shiro takes his first easy breath in days after opening the secondary hatch to Black's auxiliary bay. Keith's bed is made. For a soothing minute, he swears he can feel the Lion hum in welcome for its former pilot.

He runs a hand over the back of the seat but doesn't sit. Maybe it's for the better. There's too much history here, something he could get past if sorely needed but it isn't, and never will be, likely. This is a bruise that needs to form before it fades. This is where it all started and where it could end- _did_ end, he has to remind himself. But not as a tomb. Not for either of them.

"Please," Shiro says to the dark, and listens to it resonate. “If you’re listening, I just need- I need your help. He’s getting worse.”

It still smells like blood, and under that, something metallic. His fingers curl.

“ _Please_.”

One of the backup lights flickers out.

“Look, I’m begging you.” Shiro comes to the console and plants his hands there, gaze darting from panel to panel to screen, hoping blindly, desperately, for anything. _Anything_. “I’m _begging_ you, help him, help _me_. What do I do?” Still, an empty dash meets him. He bows over the edge, presses his hands into his eyes and sinks, and sinks, and the ground is cold; no response meets him and no peace that he’d fruitlessly searched for here is showing up. “Fuck.” He thinks about crawling into bed beside Keith and holding him. He thinks about the facility. He thinks he’s going insane.

Light stitches across the center screen, quick enough to miss had he blinked. Shiro’s heart twists.

“...c’mon, come on, help me out here. He needs us. That’s it...” Audio glitches with Keith’s voice and the screen mirrors back his figure in the chair, hands dancing over the console, shifting controls. A noise comes through the footage, fainter, and his eyes widen, sweat sticks his bangs to his forehead, urgency compels every movement and all Shiro can do is _watch_. The image dissolves into code and reconstructs itself into three charts, bars that rise and fall and lines that swivel along two axes, an oscillating trio of waves to the top. One of them is red. Above them the screen flares with their first battle against Zarkon; a younger version of himself grunts and cries out and vanishes in spiraling volts of indigo and black. One of the charts fades into transparency save for the wavelengths. They merge with what he assumes is the Lion’s as it groans, rumbles, shakes and is still.

“I’m not you.” Keith takes up the chair again. “I can’t lead them like you-” -but he does. Weeks of it flash by, months, his vitals strong and responsive and pushing, attacking; he’s explosive in Black, a churning storm inside. He sleeps in the chair sometimes, suit barely discarded. He slams his fists against the console and shouts sometimes, and pleads with Black and himself and Shiro who isn’t there, who should have _been_ there, who presses a hand to his forehead now and swallows, and forces himself to keep watching. The clone confuses Black. Keith drags him from the pod in the bay and onto the floor, and he isn’t the one shaking anymore. His voice steadies. Black picks out shifts in his vitals and highlights them for Shiro to see, a new chastisement he can’t be frustrated by anymore. He knows. Everyone knows.

The rest goes by in a blur. Fights, victories, defeats, the facility. Keith is an ever-spiking reading on a red graph and Black is the second heartbeat relinquishing Shiro’s as Allura draws his consciousness out of the Lion, and then it’s just the two. They get to the fight against the Altean bot, the Komar blast and Keith is in the chair this time, Keith is pushing them through it, Keith is _screaming_ -

“That’s enough,” Shiro whispers, but the replay doesn’t stop. Wind whistles outside the cockpit and Keith drifts, limp, out of the seat, eyes barely open. “That’s enough! What are you- why are you showing me this? Stop-” A second screen opens beside Keith’s, flitting through footage, code, readings, heartbeats. It’s Black, and it’s frantic, and it separates out the same thing every time; Shiro in danger to save Keith, Keith in danger to save him, Shiro’s body vaporized, Keith alone for hours on end to search the universe, the clone’s private panic after finding out about Naxzela, Keith dropping like a stone after him with closing eyes and screaming himself into the astral plane and sobbing over Shiro’s lifeless form and _begging_. Strings of red pixels run from square to square to Keith to Shiro, and then the mess of footage disappears.

Two charts remain. Keith is still falling.

Black’s heartbeat blinks out, then rewrites itself in red.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I MAY be continuing on to a third chapter, but only to have them be gross and in love and have to figure out a way to give Black's quintessence back because GIRL... that Lion is the real mvp. Either way, Wildfire sequel is coming first, so there's that to look forward to :)
> 
> I'm on the twitter now [@HazelMusings](https://twitter.com/HazelMusings) (original, lol) and trying to re-incorporate into fandom there but honestly I'm having a hard time figuring out who is who. It's a work in progress. Uh.
> 
> Seriously though, thank you, thank you, _thank you_ to everyone that commented and rec'd this fic and just in general interacts with my writing-- I'm really bad about replying to things because I feel super awkward and like I'm more annoying than anything, but just know that I see you, and I love you, and getting an email at work that I have another comment on something is like. Holy shit. It literally makes my day. Thank you so so so much.


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